4 replies to this topic

[Ridel]

So it was confirmed last week that our beloved Maren NiGHTS would be making an appearance in the Sonic and Mega Man: Worlds Unite comic by Archie! So release all your hype in this thread, speculate how NiGHTS may be incorporated into the arc! Let me just say if the have NiGHTS and Amaterasu meet I think I would die of hype overload!

 

[Dex la Cabra]

The sexual BEAST that is NiGHTS, where he should be; side by side with some of SEGA's finest! I saw an image of several characters in this story all fighting, with Vyse Aika and Fina from Skies of Arcadia all in it! It makes me wonder who else, if any, will appear from NiGHTS Will it be dreamers or maren, Owl or Will's Dad? ;D

[Nemoide]

I'm glad NiGHTS is coming back into the comics!  I actually have a complete set of Archie's Sonic comics.  I started as a little kid and 20+ years later, I feel like I've been reading too long to stop now...

But the original "Worlds Collide" story kind of sucked.  It was *maybe at most* three issues worth of pandering story spread out over 12 issues.  And afterwards they completely REBOOTED the continuity for both Mega Man and Sonic, which swept potentially-interesting plot points under the rug, never to be resolved or mentioned again.  I really hope this story is more interesting.  It has more characters at least... I'm not totally sold that more characters = more interesting though.  And we all know what happened the last time Archie did something with NiGHTS.

On the other hand, the Sonic Boom comic is surprisingly a lot of fun.  I find the TV show unwatchable and reviews of the games make them sound unplayable, but the comic is pretty decent: going for wacky comedy more than anything else.  Maybe it's a hopeful sign for the future of Archie's video-game comics.  And regardless, their standards of art has improved dramatically since the 90s.

[SegaManFTW]

As someone who used to love to read the Sonic Archie comics back in the day, I am really excited for this! I really want to read the original World Collide comic first (especially seeing its getting an omnibus edition soon), and then I will probably buy each of these comics as they are released. The fact NiGHTS is in it just makes it all the more exciting!

Also, didn't the Sonic comic's reboot? I heard there were some legal issues with the rights to some of the comic's original characters or something like that, so they had to reboot the universe so they could start back from square one and get rid of all of those complicated original characters and plot lines? 

[Nemoide]

Well the story is done.  Thanks to Archie Comics' piss-poor customer service it seems I'm not getting the variant covers I had subscribed to.  (They ignored the emails I sent asking why I hadn't gotten them, brushed me off on the phone when I tried to make sure I would actually be getting them, and then when I called today they told me they're sold out of many of them.)  UGH.

ANYWAY, LET'S TALK ABOUT THE STORY: it's a colossal mess.  The overarching story is "Sigma from Mega Man X is magically drawing energy from alternate realities to turn himself into a god" (I might not be remembering 100% from Mega Man X was Sigma's goal to become a god?  That seems weird for a robot.) and that's an excuse to GATHER HEROES FROM MANY GAME FRANCHISES.  So Sticks the Badger meets the Street Fighter people, and then good guys go and recruit guys from NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, Ghosts & Goblins, Monster Hunter, Alex Kidd, Breath of Fire III, Golden Axe, Skies of Arcadia, Okami, and a bunch of other things I can't even remember.  Each game gets between one and two pages of "what's that, a talking animal and robot want my help to fight a giant evil robot?  okay!" and then if you look REALLY closely you can see them in the background of a "good guys vs. bad guys" splash page.  THAT'S IT.  NiGHTS' dialog consists of "C'mon Reala, this sounds like fun" and "oh no, my Paraloops aren't working" which is double what Keil from Panzer Dragoon had which was roughly "My name is Keil Fluge and I ride this blue dragon" and then never says anything again.
Sigma talks about how evil he is.  The good guys talk about how determined they are to stop that evil.  Sonic and Mega Man both go super which lets them beat the bad guy.  The status quo is saved!

I know these comics are aimed at kids first and nostalgic gamers second, but this feels like a cynical cash-grab even by the lax standards of kids comics and nostalgia titles.  There is NO substance anywhere in this.  This isn't why I first started liking Sonic.  This isn't what kept me reading Sonic comics into adulthood. It's even LESS representative of what I like about NiGHTS. The art's "good enough" to service this kind of story but not good enough to really make this worth reading just for that.